Looking at contemporary art is like panning for gold: once in a while, amidst the drift and dribble, you stumble fortuitously on the shiny stuff, on someone like a Katie Paterson or a George Shaw, say.
On someone like Mackie.
Mackie's subect is "the very average man", "the frailty and silliness of everything". There is black humour aplenty: his world is peopled by what look like distinctly shady types but are in fact just men, caught in the act of simply being themselves, '
Mackie is a wonderful artist. And the reviewer is also an intelligent and acute observer.
De Chirico with a heavy dose of Hopper.
Yes. I can see that.